My question: how can I get dmix going? I use nforce audio (intel8x0), and the alsa driver doesnt support hardware mixing.

Theres plenty of threads around, presumably for 2.4 kernel users, because these guides involve editing "your alsa config", whereas us 2.6 users dont have this (right?). To get 2.6 with alsa going, all I did was compile it into the kernel, emerge inject alsa-driver, emerge alsa-utils, and use alsamixer to unmute the channels.

All I'd like to do is try dmix, so I can play multiple audio streams at once. I've tried ESD, and arts, and didn't like them. I'd at least like to give dmix a go, before sticking my sb live back in

Theres plenty of threads around, presumably for 2.4 kernel users, because these guides involve editing "your alsa config", whereas us 2.6 users dont have this (right?). To get 2.6 with alsa going, all I did was compile it into the kernel, emerge inject alsa-driver, emerge alsa-utils, and use alsamixer to unmute the channels.

which makes me think that it should go in the user's home directory, but how much sense does that make? It seems unlikely that when alsa starts up at boot time that it would search the user's home directories.

I have a somewhat related question: If my alsa sound drivers do not support hardware mixing, does that necessarily mean that my sound card is not capable of hardware mixing? Could it be an incomplete driver problem? I use the via_82xx sound driver. if anyone could fill me in, I'd appreciate it. Thanks_________________"Everytime you justify
another good in you dies"

you need to merge the latest mplayer from ~ and switch to using the alsa9 audio driver in your config. you then need to set it up to use the dmixed pcm output that you have set up in ~/.asoundrc_________________http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd

you need to merge the latest mplayer from ~ and switch to using the alsa9 audio driver in your config. you then need to set it up to use the dmixed pcm output that you have set up in ~/.asoundrc

I do have the latest version of mplayer (1_pre4_r3), I have set it to use alsa9 audio driver. The only thing I do not know how to do is to set it up to "use the dmixed pcm output that you have set up in ~/.asoundrc"
BTW, the " ~/.asoundrc" is the one jenrst posted.

One more thing. When you create the " ~/.asoundrc", do you need to reboot the system or restart the alsa script? I did not do any of the above! How do I know that alsa is using " ~/.asoundrc"?

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 3:42 pm Post subject: It still looks like it is not transparent. Why, oh why?

I am not sure if I got everything right, but this messing with daemons and plugins feels enormously frustrating to me.

I mean, why can't they make a _transparent_ software mixer? Why must every software be "updated" and "configured" to support the software mixing thing? Why on Earth couldn't they make a plugin that needs no attention from the actual software, but just lets the software open and open the sound device? Why must mplayer, arts and others _know_ about the dmix plugin and _select_ it? That is not transparent.

How are people ever going to use outdated or sluggishly updated software with dmix? I mean, for this much trouble, someone could have made the plugin truly transparent, so that software using it wouldn't need to know it exists. So that software would just think it is opening an ordinary PCM device all for itself. Configuring the dmix plugin should be enough and would be enough if it was truly transparent.

How will I use timidity with dmix? If I want to use dmix to mix the output of two timidity instances, afaik. it is a _no_ can _do_, because timidity has not been _updated_ (graahh) with support for dmix! Why couldn't someone do it in such a way that one timidity would know nothing about the other, but just think it is opening the only PCM device in town?

Surprisingly, I could make two instances of Timidity to play at the same time. I guess it supports ALSA natively then.

But I could not make modplugplay cmdline client to use dmix. And I could not use XMMS OSS plugin to play at the same time with anything else. So it is still not transparent. And my Gentoo system doesn't have the aoss script, even if I did want to use such thing.

Does anyone have experiences with the following situations:
1. Mixing a 44100Hz source to 48000Hz in dmix. I know it works, but does it hurt sound quality? I couldn't say yes or no.

2. Using an application with ALSA 0.5 API with dmix plugin. Does it work or not?

3. Using the Allegro library to play a game's MIDI music through timidity, and SFX directly. With SB 128 this needs transparent dmix'ing to hear both.

I mean, why can't they make a _transparent_ software mixer? Why must every software be "updated" and "configured" to support the software mixing thing? Why on Earth couldn't they make a plugin that needs no attention from the actual software, but just lets the software open and open the sound device? Why must mplayer, arts and others _know_ about the dmix plugin and _select_ it? That is not transparent.

To me, the problem is that this is something that should be handled by the driver. Both my nForce 2 board and my KT-600 based board, in theory, have hardware mixers. (Both also support 5.1 audio in hardware, as well, but that's another gripe for another time...) But neither can play more than one sound at once, not because the hardware doesn't support it, but because the driver doesn't. nVidia doesn't care enough about us Linux users to bother to write a driver (hence, we use the Intel 8x0 driver...); and I'm not sure VIA writes drivers for anything other than Windows to begin with.

I'm almost to the point where I'm gonna go out and just buy a pair of Sound Blaster Audigy cards, one for each box. So far, that looks like it's the only way to get functional hardware mixing and 5.1 audio support in Linux.

With much of trying and reading, looking for help in the forums, I finally got dmix to work with mplayer!
I just created the file ~/.asoundrc like posted earlier in this thread and then I could start mplayer with the following command, maybe it helps someone =)